I’m Mom’s MedicationChapter 3

I followed Mom home, whispering, “Fuck,” as I spied Dad’s car already in the driveway. I walked into the house just behind her to find Dad standing in the hallway, a torrent of snarling words exploding from his lips.

“Again! I swear, Cassie — you need to pray to God for the salvation of your soul. He has a special place reserved in Hell for sluts and whores like you!”

Mom stood her ground for a moment, but finally burst into tears, sobbing, “I’m sorry,” as she ran up the stairs. A moment later, the door to the guest bedroom slammed shut and I knew it would be another long freaking night in the Hunter home.

Dad glared at me as if I had betrayed him and maybe in my heart I had, before snapping at me, “Where the hell did you find her this time?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Does it matter, Dad? She needs help.”

My father brushed past and into the living room, settling heavily into his old recliner. He picked up his newspaper and snapped it open with a loud pop. “Do you know who it was…or was there more than one this time?”

I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed, a sudden vision of the three lowlifes naked and in bed with my mother, fucking her hard and brutally, not caring for her, just seeing her as another cheap whore they picked up in a bar…Mom’s face contorted in absolute lust as they pounded their cocks into her. I drove the image from my mind and opening my eyes, replied, “Does it matter, Dad? We need to get Mom some real help.”

#

I was just short of my fifteenth birthday when Mom disappeared and by that, I mean she was kidnapped. It was just another uneventful day in the lives of the Hunter family when Mom announced she was off to the supermarket and asked me if I wanted anything special, rolling her eyes when I said jokingly, a six pack of beer. She ran her purse strap over her shoulder, smiled at me the way only a mother does and was out the door…and she didn’t come back.

It was late afternoon before we knew anything was wrong and then only because a sheriff’s deputy came to the house and informed us that Mom’s minivan had been found deserted on a country road — groceries still inside along with her wallet, credit card and forty-nine dollars in cash. Of Mom there was no sign and no clue as to what had happened.

Dad was stoic from the start, fearing to state the worst or the best scenarios possible. A massive search was begun — combing fields and woods for miles around, but to no avail. It was as if Mom had vanished from the face of the earth. Days turned into weeks turned into months. The state police and the F.B.I. did all but announce she was considered dead and as the first year of her absence passed, Dad (who had been considered the most likely suspect, but who had clearly been at work at the time of her disappearance was completely exonerated), and I had the sense that Mom now dwelled in the realm of what law enforcement called the cold case files.

My father rarely showed his emotions, never crying and castigating me when he caught me crying over Mom, harshly chewing me out and saying, “Your mother would have wanted us to be brave, John.” In his heart, by the first Christmas, I think he gave Mom up for dead, but I refused to ever consider that as a possibility — the sense that Mom was alive…somewhere out there in the world, always lingered in my heart and I never gave up hope.

I often dreamed of her, especially of her on the last day I saw her — her slender frame dressed in a long denim dress, her lovely face framed by her short black hair, cut much like that old movie actress, Aubrey Hepburn, blue eyes brilliant and glowing. I dreamed that she left and came back and that life went on as it should have, all of us living happily ever after. It hurt the most for me after those dreams. I would cry a bit in my bed and vow never to give up hope that she would return.

We were three years and a few months beyond her disappearance, me celebrating my eighteenth birthday the spring before my senior year of high school when the local chief of police showed up at our house. He had a stunned smile on his face as he gushed to my father and me that Mom was alive — that she’d been found in a house thirty miles away. Chief Brenner gave us a siren escort to the hospital, Dad so shocked he could barely keep the car on the road.

A nurse ushered us into Mom’s room and we both just stopped and stared in wonder at the woman sleeping in the hospital bed with IVs stuck in her and the frightful sounds of a monitor keeping track of her vital signs. The nurse, a young, blonde-haired woman saw our dismay and concern and quickly reassured us. “She’s doing fine — she’s just badly dehydrated. All she needs are fluids and rest.” She reached out and patted my shoulder. “Your mother is okay…it’s like a miracle.”